1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a tip processing method for a jacketed optical fiber, and a multi-functional tip processing apparatus for a jacketed optical fiber which enables a plurality of processing operations related to the tip processing to be performed automatically by a single apparatus in accordance with the foregoing method.
2. Description of Related Arts
Tip processing of a jacketed optical fiber is performed prior to an optical connection with an optical device for inspection of the jacketed optical fiber comprising optical fibers provided with a jacket, or an optical connection or the like with other jacketed optical fibers. This tip processing refers to steps of processing rendered on the tip of a jacketed optical fiber, including removal of a jacket, cleaning of exposed optical fibers, and cutting of the optical fibers to a specified length, an and object thereof is to minimize a connection loss in optical connection to achieve proper optical connection.
Conventionally, such tip processing has been performed manually, with workers using different jigs for different processing steps, manually performing tip processing operations such as removing the jacket, cleaning, and cutting. As a result, tip processing of many jacketed optical fibers, as in the processing of an optical fiber cable, which is a collection of a number of jacketed optical fibers, has posed a problem of a long processing time and low operation efficiency because of the manual work.
In particular, for a multicore fiber such as a fiber ribbon, which consists of multiple optical fibers arranged in parallel, covered for protection with a jacket made of synthetic resin or the like, and molded into a tape, the tip processing results in the loss of the jacket that holds the optical fibers together, causing the optical fibers at the tip to separate and become loose. Therefore, workers faced the problem of not being able to cut the tips of the optical fibers to the same length, unless they rearranged the separated optical fibers in parallel and clamped them onto a cutting jig or the like.
Furthermore, if the tips of all the optical fibers were not cut to the same length, problems arose during optical connection with other multicore fibers, optical equipment, etc., including prevention of proper optical connection with corresponding optical fibers or with optical equipment and damaging of the optical fibers at the other end of the optical connection.
For these reasons, automation of a jacketed optical fiber tip processing was difficult, and the processing has conventionally been performed manually.